Text- 1- Analyse the content and the language of the given manifesto.

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 Text-2 Comment on the relevance of the content in the present scenario.

Walking or running in nature with a

therapist is helping people heal
Outdoor therapy can help people to become reflective and their body
language while moving gives clues to their feelings
Lisa Buckingham
Sat 17 Apr 2021 17.00 BST

Covid has transformed the way many of us work

and that includes the people who look after our
mental health. For much of lockdown,
psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists and
psychiatrists have all had to venture into the
world of online therapy, tackling their clients’
issues via a computer screen, and often the
experience has felt less than ideal for all those
involved.

But throughout much of lockdown, another

option has become increasingly popular:
combining therapy with the benefits of the great
outdoors. The British Psychological Society
(BPS) issued guidance on this outdoor approach last summer, advising its members on how
best to take their work outside, addressing issues such as confidentiality and the absence of a
boundaried space. Yet many therapists ditched the four walls and a couch approach a long
time ago and have been working out in nature for years.

Psychotherapist Beth Collier is founder of the Nature Therapy School, which offers training
to psychotherapists who want to practise outside. “Working outside is something that needs
to be thought through by the therapist and reflected on with their supervisor or in a training
setting,” she says. “There are boundaries and dynamics to be managed.” Collier walks with
her clients in the woodlands and parks of Croydon, south London, and finds nature is more
than simply a pleasant backdrop.

“There’s something hugely freeing about being in open space and some people go deeper far
sooner than they would do in a room,” says Collier. “The part of the brain that is responsible
for ruminative and negative thoughts – the subgenual prefrontal cortex – has been shown to
quieten when we connect with nature, which gives people more space to process their
problems.”

Collier also learns a great deal about a client from their body language, and how they
respond physically to their environment. “Movement is a really meaningful part of the work
– pace, the direction they choose to go in, whether they choose to pause, to lean against a
tree or sit down. For example, people often walk faster and keep going if they’re angry or
frustrated.” All these can offer insights and clues to their state of mind.

Sarah, 35, tried outdoor psychotherapy three years ago when she was suffering with severe
depression and anxiety. A friend suggested that, as someone who loves being out in nature,

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she might seek the help of Lara Just (adadsu.com), a psychotherapist who works outdoors in
Somerset and on Hampstead Heath in north London.

“I’ve always found nature soothing, so I was attracted to the idea,” says Sarah. “Lara
immediately picked up on the fact that I was drawn to being under trees and touching them,
so that quickly became an important feature of our sessions.” Sarah found it deeply
reassuring to return to the same spot and also took comfort in the inevitability of each
season. “You feel like part of the landscape – you see nature move on and change as you
move on and change through the therapy. The seasons can reflect the therapeutic process –
the renewal of spring, the shedding of old leaves in autumn.”

In open space some people go deeper sooner than in a room

Collier also finds that this shift in seasons and the weather is key to exploring a client’s
feelings. “Their response to the outdoors can reveal a lot about them and offers opportunities
for reflection,” she says. “The rain might feel oppressive and unpleasant for one person and
raw and exhilarating for another.”

This way of working also lends itself, she says, to supporting people who’ve experienced
trauma. It can be easier to discharge difficult emotions – particularly fear and anxiety –
through movement and pace, rather than being confined to a chair. “They might also feel
more able to touch on uncomfortable feelings because they dissipate sooner, whereas in a
room, they may hang around for longer,” says Collier.

There can be something more freeing about the idea of walking and talking, without the
pressure of eye contact, away from the more enclosed environment of the consulting room.

Sarah certainly felt this was the case for her. “My breakdown was caused by unresolved
traumas from many years before, such as the sudden death of my father in my early 20s.
When that trauma started to come out during my therapy, I would have felt trapped in a
room. Instead, I was in this neutral space where I could draw wisdom from nature as Lara
questioned and reflected with me.”

Other therapists who work outdoors take it up a notch and use the outdoors in a different
way. Psychotherapist William Pullen runs with his clients, practising what he has coined
Dynamic Running Therapy.

After experiencing a period of depression 12 years ago, he went into therapy and also started
running with a friend. Pullen believes it was the combined effect of the two that brought him
back to health and when he went on to qualify as a psychotherapist himself, he offered
outdoor sessions combining the two activities.

Movement can help combat the feeling of being stuck emotionally

“We have a thinking brain and a doing brain,” Pullen says. “During periods of anxiety and
depression, the thinking brain can go into overdrive and cause unhelpful ruminative
thoughts, and we can lose motivation for almost everything. By moving our bodies, we can
shift again towards the doing brain, discover that it’s still in there somewhere. It seems to
bring hope and light back into people. Movement can also combat that feeling of being stuck,
and we can work through a problem by literally moving from A to B. Being in nature has its
part to play, but, for me, it’s the movement that’s the medicine.”

Pullen finds that men especially benefit from the format that he offers. “I think they find the
side-by-side interaction more comfortable, rather than having to sit in a chair and look at
me,” he says.

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It tends to be people who already run that come to him, but the client leads the pace and
direction. “This makes the power balance more even and can aid the therapeutic alliance,”
says Pullen. “They have more ownership of the space than they do in a room.”

This echoes Sarah’s experience with her therapist. “I found it to be very democratic,” she
says. “Everything was self-directed – I could walk where I liked, choose which path to take,
when to sit down or lean against a tree. I was tentative at first, afraid of leading the way, but
my confidence built up and the sessions had a real sense of exploration.”

The work of Collier, Pullen and Just within urban green spaces also shows that outdoor
therapy isn’t only the preserve of people who live rurally. “Nature does not have to be
wilderness and mountains,” says Collier. “As we’ve increasingly appreciated during this
pandemic, parks and public gardens are incredible green spaces – there are lots of ways to
connect with nature within them, too. Many of us live in survival mode in towns and cities,
but when we immerse ourselves in green space, we remember what makes us feel good.”

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Text 3- Comment on the text’s style and language.

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Text 4- Discuss how the layout and the language is used in the opinion column to persuade the
reader to take action.

Lockdown has allowed British people to

indulge their curtain-twitching vices
Joel Golby
If you’re not going out having a beer in the sun, you’re probably at home
tutting really loudly about those who do

‘There was sunshine and a sense of joyfulness in the streets. People were laughing
out loud and drinking together and cheersing.’ People socialising in Soho, London,
on 16 April. Photograph: Rob Pinney/Getty Images
Wed 21 Apr 2021 15.45 BST

I went to Soho in central London last weekend, which was nicer than usual. My
regular mooching about town – which
I did just describe in full here but read
it back and thought (about myself,
about my own life), “No, that sounds
too pretentious” and so deleted – was
laced with this extra frisson of energy.
There was sunshine and a sense of
joyfulness in the streets. People were
laughing out loud and drinking
together and cheersing. It felt
exhilarating: like colour was creeping
back into the world. From a distance, I
noticed a professional photographer
taking crowd photos, presumably so newspapers could shame people for legally
having fun. Cool, I thought. Very good and cool.

It’s a weird moment in the lockdown cycles, here: we’re allowed to do things, again,
but with “doing things” comes a fresh new round of “being scolded for doing things”,
and with “being scolded for doing things” comes this meta-scolding where you’re not
allowed to express that you don’t like being scolded for doing things because that, in
itself, is scolding. (Two online headlines: “Londoners swarm Soho on the first
Saturday after lockdown eased” and “Police struggle to control crowds after Covid
hospitality rules relaxed”.)

So yeah, sure, have a drink outside a pub with the friends you haven’t seen for seven
months … IF YOU WANT TO KILL MY NAN, (who is fully two-jab vaccinated and
trying to book a cruise you couldn’t possibly afford). We’ve been so hung up on rules
– both adhering to them, over-adhering to them, and roiling with seething rage when
other people don’t adhere to them as strictly as we do – that as lockdown loosens I
worry that we’ll struggle to let go of them all. Some people’s idea of having fun is just
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having fun: some people’s idea of having fun is getting furious at other people having
fun.

The two worlds struggle to co-exist. Though I don’t subscribe to this, I do understand
how it makes a rough sort of sense – a YouGov survey from last week highlighted the
problem quite succinctly. When asked if they would be adhering to new relaxed-but-
still-distanced socialising rules, 91% of respondents’ assuredly said they would.
When asked if they trusted other people to abide by the same rules, 67% said they
didn’t. This is Britain in a statistic. I know how to behave correctly, but I can see from
watching you very closely that you do not.

But I do think this goes a little deeper than the pandemic: essentially, that quite a lot
of the country would be comfortable extending lockdown indefinitely if it meant
people they didn’t like never got to enjoy themselves again. Extrapolate it out and a
lot of people’s lives don’t actually go beyond “stay at home a lot, socialise only when
they bump into nearby neighbours while doing the supermarket big shop, order
takeaway every Saturday and get too into doing the school run”, and in that sense the
pandemic hasn’t wildly changed their lives. Take the commute away and that gives
three extra hours in the day to watch The Greatest Showman on Amazon Prime
again. Why not keep it like this for everyone forever?

None of this is new, but lockdown has put it in bold: a new version of puritanism that
we’ve been slipping into for a while has been mainstaged by a year of curtain
twitching and NHS clap-policing and that Tesco Christmas advert that expressed
ironic shock at the idea of not donating to Captain Tom. Of all the things we’ll
struggle to shake from this pandemic – I sneezed on a bus the other day and I think it
would have been more socially acceptable if I got a rifle out and fired off a couple of
errant shots – the Neighbourhood Watch-ification of public life will be hardest to
cast off. So this week, enjoy whichever of the two vices you ascribe to – having a beer
in the sun, or looking at other people having a beer in the sun and tutting really
loudly about it – because it’ll be a long time until these two warring factions find
peace.

Text 5 – Evaluate the message of the blog piece.

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Memories of Christmas Past: Don’t Let Ex-
Boyfriend Nostalgia Ruin The Holidays

Mackenzie Newcomb

Dec 16, 2013 9:46am

It’s that time of the year again! The season devoted to giving thanks and spending time with people
you love. The only thing different about this year? You’re single. Inevitably, you find yourself reflecting
on past holiday seasons when you found yourself, well, happier.

It’s not that you want to be a Grinch, but remember the first Christmas after finding out a man in a
red suit wasn’t sneaking through your chimney? Some years are just more magical than others.

Personally, I find ex-boyfriend nostalgia an unavoidable aspect of the holiday season. It isn’t that I
yearn for material possessions; I’ve always found gift exchanges kind of awkward anyways. Regardless,
tis’ the season for romantic Instagram posts and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

Seeing what seems like everyone I know in a jolly-ass relationship reminds me of past Christmas
seasons where I too had someone to kiss under the mistletoe (sorry that was lame).

Momentarily you forget why things didn’t workout between you and your ex, or even the undeniable
fact that you no longer possess feelings for the person. Instead, all of the “potential” the two of you
had is the only thing on your mind.

Despite everything you dislike about this person, in these confusing moments you can only bring
yourself to reflect on exactly how you felt last Christmas. He sure did look cute in that sweater.

This year, instead of bringing along physical evidence that you are dating someone, you will be forced
to answer questions. “So, how’s the love life?” asked by nearly every family member ever.

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It isn’t just the fact that they are blatantly prying into your personal life, it’s the fact that so much rides
on this single question. If you say “non-existent” you will run the risk of an extensive pep talk about
how “Mr. Right” is out there looking for you.

Or even worse, “Why’d you guys break up? We loved him!” I’m never entirely sure how to respond to
this one. Do you actually want my answer? He cheated on me with a handful of 18-year-olds, neglected
to tell me he had gonorrhea, found me inadequate and dumped me via Facebook.

(Okay, none of those things were true…but what if they were?)

Generally if I’m single I usually just say I’m “seeing someone.” Usually I’m just seeing that person every-
other weekend after 2 a.m., but I leave that part out. Modern day romance, baby. Maybe I’m not being
entirely honest, but I feel like everyone wins this way.

My relatives can leave the dinner table confident there is a wedding with an open bar in the near
future, and I don’t have to get “set up” on a date with their grocer’s son.

Love is f*cking everywhere—music, movies and those damn proposal videos that fill our entire news
feeds. While it is easy to feel excluded from what appears to be surrounding us, it is important to
remember your relationship for what it actually was, not just at Christmastime.

This year I may not have someone to take pictures with me in front of the tree, but at the end of the
day I am grateful. I am thankful for the lack of obligation to buy red and white lingerie that is both
tasteless and overpriced, to have girlfriends who are my soul mates and that full bottle of red wine to
myself.

http://elitedaily.com/dating/ex-boyfriend-nostalgia-holiday-season

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Text 6- Comment on the style and content of the text.

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